The U.S. is preparing to send Ukraine an additional $725 million in military assistance, including counter-drone systems and munitions for its High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, which could indicate more of the longer-range missiles are headed to the battlefield.
The Syrian military and its ally Russia conducted deadly joint air raids Dec. 2 on areas that Islamist-led rebels seized control of over the weekend. The strikes were a response to a lightning offensive by the rebels that saw them wrest control of swathes of northwest Syria from government forces.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te touched down in Hawaii over the weekend and spoke by phone with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as China slammed the U.S. for the visit and for selling weapons parts to Taipei.
The Israeli military has been expanding its presence in central Gaza in recent months, fortifying military bases and demolishing Palestinian buildings, according to Israeli officials and satellite images, a move that suggests that it may be preparing to exert long-term control over the area.
Scrutiny of the military’s Osprey aircraft is ramping up as family members of an Air Force special operations Airman who was killed in a crash last year have filed a civil wrongful death lawsuit against the aircraft’s manufacturers, and members of Congress are demanding that officials ground the troubled aircraft and change the culture of secrecy around its issues.
Several high-profile billionaires and backers of President-elect Donald Trump are waging a public battle against crewed aircraft and tanks, arguing that drones can do the job better, and more cheaply. Recent public comments from tech investors with interests in uncrewed technologies—who also have Trump’s ear and helped fund his campaign—could point to a major new effort in Trump’s Pentagon in which several expensive weapons programs could face the ax in favor of pilotless planes and driverless vehicles.
In recent years, Air Force leaders have put a renewed emphasis on electronic warfare, recognizing the importance of the nonkinetic fight. As new kinds of EW threats emerge from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and more, learn more about how USAF is keeping up with the change.
The U.S. Air Force will begin deploying F-35A Lightning II fighters to northeast Japan in spring 2026, according to a Misawa city base affairs official. The Pentagon in July announced plans to send 48 of the fifth-generation fighters to Misawa Air Base to replace 36 F-16 Fighting Falcons. The announcement gave no date for the arrival of the F-35As, the variant built for conventional takeoffs and landings.
A new AI tool from GDIC that quickly fuses data from multiple air-defense sensors could transform how militaries defend against emerging aerial threats such as hypersonic missiles and drone swarms.
The world’s largest 100 defense contractors amassed $632 billion in combined revenue in 2023, a real-term annual growth of more than 4 percent that comes as conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East continue to propel weapons demand, according to a new Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) report released Dec. 2.
In this episode of the Aerospace Advantage, Heather “Lucky” Penney discusses one of the coolest aircraft to ever fly, the B-2, with Northop Grumman’s Doug Young, the leader in charge of modernizing the B-2, while also overseeing the B-21.
Varda Space Industries secured a $48 million contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to test military payloads on the company’s reentry capsules. ... The four-year deal with AFRL, announced on Nov. 26, leverages Varda’s W-Series reentry capsules as platforms to test payloads at hypersonic speeds. The spacecraft are built on Rocket Lab’s Photon satellite bus.
AU.S. Air Force F-16C Viper has conducted the first test release of a Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW) missile. The service has said it expects the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter to be the first operational launch platform for the SiAW, which is being developed to provide a high-speed strike capability against a variety of time-sensitive ground targets.
Nearly 100 years ago, scientists and militaries around the world were in a race to send mankind into the heavens. But this wasn’t the Space Race of the 1950s and 1960s. Without rockets and jets, these aeronauts as they were called ascended using balloons. And the U.S. military was firmly involved in what would prove to be a deadly and chaotic competition.
